Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Bearing east for Bavaria and beer

Frauenkirche and Neues Rathaus, Munich

Commeth
the hour, commeth the beer. But first came the chaos. Our long-awaited trip to
Bavaria was thrown into chaos at the 11th hour when our flight to Munich was
cancelled by virtue of a strike by Lufthansa pilots.

With only
a little over 24 hours to go before we were scheduled to fly, The Other Half
fortunately managed to get us new tickets on board EasyJet, from Gatwick.

One point
to remember here: we were booking late, obviously, but those EasyJet tickets
cost more for a one-way journey than the original Lufthansa return flights had
cost.

So much
for all the guff about ‘budget’ airlines. And unless you are travelling with
only enough luggage for a couple of days, and can therefore cram it all into a
cabin bag, you can expect to pay around £30 per case for the privilege of
taking more.

Mind, judging
by the sight of fellow passengers struggling to cram a bag into the overhead
lockers, some people stretch the definition of cabin baggage to its limit and
probably beyond.

That said,
I’ll give EasyJet credit for being considerably less unpleasant than RyanAir.

Erdinger

At
Gatwick, we discovered that the plane was a little late arriving. But, with the
wind now in the ‘right’ direction, we made up time on the journey to Germany.

Our
initial plans would have meant that we arrived at Munich airport at around 11pm
German time, so with that in mind, we’d booked a room for that night at the
Hilton hotel that sits squarely between the two terminals.

In the
event, we had slightly longer at the hotel, since the EasyJet flight was two
hours earlier. But having checked in, neither us of felt much like sitting down
to a meal – travel days do disrupt eating patterns – and opted instead to sit
outside (yes, outside) in the clear evening air (albeit under a small heater) to
enjoy a couple of glasses of beer.

In this
case, it was Erdinger: a clean weißbier
with a good taste. And jolly welcome it was too. After the previous day’s
panic, merely being in Munich felt like a victory.

The next
morning, with sun in the sky, we grabbed a coffee (€25 for breakfast was not on
the menu) and caught a train into central Munich.

Bavaria
may, in many ways, be a conservative part of the world, but that it not a
neo-liberal conservatism that believes in taking every opportunity to rip
people off.

At the
main railway station, which we were due to depart from in the afternoon, there
were whole rooms of lockers where we could leave our bags for the day at a mere
€3.

Weißwurst, pretzel and mustard

That’s
right: no airport-style ‘security’ to allow some jobsworthy tosspot to spend 10
minutes running a finger around your laptop as though it’s the most mysterious
container he’s ever encountered (all the while, giving you an unpleasantly
challenging stare), and then charging you a rip-off £6 to hold your bag for three
hours, with the company claiming that’s a “competitive” price.

Take note
Britain and, in particular, the Excess Baggage Company at Manchester
Piccadilly.

Free to wander,
we headed straight toward the Marienplatz and, claiming that coffee as our
‘first breakfast’, sat down on Neuhauser Straße outside an eatery called
Schnitzelwirt to engage in a great Bavarian tradition.

Second
breakfast traditionally occurs at around 11am, but always before noon. The reason
for that is that it includes weißwurst,
a local delicacy that, in the past, would have gone off if left any later.

It’s served in
in the water in which it has been gently simmered and comes with a pretzel,
sweet, grainy mustard and beer. The beer in this case was a Franziskaner – a
gorgeous weißbier brewed in Munich,
which I have experienced from bottles in the UK.

Altes Rathaus, Munich

It’s the sort
of drink that makes you stop anything else, sit up and pay attention to the
taste.

The most
traditional way to eat the weißwurst is to cut off one end and suck the light
veal and bacon mix out of its skin. Or you can slice it from end to end and
then roll the meat out with a fork. I opted for the latter approach.

But all in all,
this Bavarian ritual was observed properly and very much enjoyed.

We ambled on,
seeing the extraordinary Rathaus-Glockenspiel strike noon. Made in 1908, its 32
life-size figures re-enact scenes from the city’s history, accompanied by 43
bells.

This is the new
town hall – a vast piece of Gothic Revival (it has 400 rooms) built between
1867 and 1908 by Georg von Hauberrisser.

Its
predecessor, the Altes Rathaus, stands at the east side of the Marienplatz, and
was first documented in 1310.

The site of a 1938 speech by Goebbels that was the
prelude to Kristallnacht, it now, rather more pleasingly, serves as a toy and
teddy bear museum.

Heilig-Geist-Kirche, Munich

Here too, we
could see the iconic twin onion domes of the Frauenkirche, the city’s cathedral.
A Romanesque church was first built on the site in the 12th century. What stands
there today crosses architectural styles, with the main building – completed in
1494 – being Gothic, while the Renaissance-style domes were added in 1524.

I bought a hat
– of which more another time – and between exploring churches (a first taste of
Bavarian baroque), markets and shops, we took coffee in thetypically large
German cups that are almost bowls.

The original
plan for our time in Munich had involved visiting one of the three major art
galleries, but we soon realised that, to do so, we’d be rushing ridiculously.
Thus we’d settled on a rather less frenzied approach.

But heading
back to the railway station, we found ourselves facing another
less-than-relaxing snafu: The Other Half’s locker wouldn’t open.

Welcoming coffee

Thankfully,
we’d allowed ourselves plenty of time, and I raced off to deploy my pidgin
German in finding someone to sort it out.

That was not entirely
straightforward, but for the first time in my life, I actually understood
directions in another language and did, after what seemed like an age but
probably wasn’t, find a young man who understood, picked up a fistful of keys
and followed me back.

Checking first
that we could describe what was in the locker, he then opened it and liberated
the case, leaving us to head to the train that would take us to Füssen.

The journey
south east into the Alps takes two hours: fairly fast for the first half, it
slows as you start the real climb into the mountains.

Not that we
could see anything more than Alpine pasture that was close by, with heavy cloud
draping its gloom over anything higher. My frustration was almost tangible.

We emerged at
Füssen into a dark early evening, a fine drizzle in the air.

A fine plate of zander

Our hotel,
fortunately, was only a very short walk away and, as a large tour party was
decanted from a coach into the lobby, hauling industrial amounts of suitcases
up in the lift for a single night, we were handed flutes of sparkling wine by
the lady at reception.

Settling in a
short while later, we found that we could look out and see the summer palace of
the bishops of Augsburg close by.

After a dinner in
Chili, one of the hotel’s two restaurants – a very enjoyable first taste for me
of zander, a fresh water fish – we decided that it had been a long couple of
days and an early night was in order.

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About Me

London-based journalist, writer, photographer and artist, with one Other Half and three cats.
This blog is about all sorts of things, but mostly reviews. My interests include comics and opera (and even comic opera), cats, tattoos and art.
100% personal. Non-PC. No 'party line'.
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